Skip to content

The Assault

What happened before, during, and after August 22, 2025 — and why the building's own cameras tell a different story than the building's own front desk.

By Justin Horn — Victim and primary witness, Commonwealth v. Talley

CP-51-CR-0000673-2026 · Goldtex Apartments, 315 N. 12th Street, Philadelphia · Published June 24, 2026

Author's Note

Starting in August 2025, I was hit by events faster than I could process them: a serious assault, a building in chemical crisis, simultaneous pressure on a family trust I am a beneficiary of, and a landlord using every available tool to destabilize me while I was already down. I was sick. At times I could not type reliably. My phone was usually the only device available to me.

The priority was documentation. Not polished documentation — documentation that existed at all. If I got sicker, or if things escalated further, I needed a record of what had happened before I lost the capacity to create one. So I used AI to help build and maintain this site, dictating or typing out what I remembered from a phone while events were still unfolding. New things kept happening. Every time I sat down to clean up what was already here, something else required immediate documentation instead.

I want to be clear about what this site is: a real-time personal record, built under abnormal constraints, by someone who was sick and overwhelmed. It is not a finished product. It has always been a living document, and the edit history reflects that — both the rate at which events were occurring and my attempts to keep up with them. The inaccuracies that appeared here were never intentional. I am working through the record now, correcting what is wrong, and making sure what remains is accurate. This is that process. It is still ongoing.

Before

Stephen Talley lived in my building. So did his boyfriend, PJ DiDonato, who listed his unit as Apt. 908 at 315 North 12th Street — Goldtex Apartments, a Post Brothers property in Philadelphia's Northern Liberties neighborhood. I had lived in Unit 806 since early 2024.

I knew them. We were neighbors in the way neighbors in a dense urban building are neighbors — shared corridors, shared elevators, a nodding familiarity that is not friendship but is proximity. That proximity is what made what happened on August 22, 2025 something other than a random act.

Before August 22, I had reported documented antisemitic content to building management. I sent screenshots of a fellow resident's social media posts — including calls for violence against Jewish people — to Ray Burnett, then the Post Brothers property manager at Goldtex, by text message in June 2025. He responded and asked to meet. In July 2025 I showed the same posts in person to his successor, Natasia Martin, who dismissed the matter as a "tenant dispute" and told me I could handle it myself. Building management took no action. The resident remained in the building. This documented pre-assault knowledge — that I was Jewish, that I had been targeted, and that I had reported it on at least three occasions to building management before August 22 — is part of the basis for the §3604(b) claim in the federal fair housing complaint now on file with HUD (case ref: R3Intakebox1@hud.gov). The post-assault retaliation by Greystar management is documented separately at kane-retaliation.html.

The assault lasted eleven minutes. Before it ended, I had sustained three fractures: left orbital rim, bilateral nasal, and left maxillary (jaw). The charges that followed — aggravated assault as a felony of the first degree under 18 Pa.C.S. §2702(a)(1), reckless endangerment, and simple assault — were built on surveillance footage that the building's own staff initially told police did not exist.

That is the contradiction this page documents.

During

The attack happened in the Goldtex lobby on August 22, 2025. Stephen Talley and PJ DiDonato were both present. The eleven-minute assault resulted in:

  • Left orbital rim fracture
  • Bilateral nasal fractures
  • Left maxillary (jaw) fracture

Anti-semitic elements were present during the attack. The charge of ethnic intimidation was filed at the outset and refiled after supervisory review, though it was not held over at either preliminary hearing. That outcome does not erase the underlying evidence of ethnic motivation — the audio capture of Talley's slur, the building's documented knowledge of prior antisemitism reports, and the retaliatory conduct that followed are all part of the federal record. The three charges that did proceed to trial — aggravated assault (F1), REAP, and simple assault — were scheduled for July 21, 2026.

Talley filmed me during or immediately after the attack on his iPhone. The file metadata records a timestamp of 16:24:20. That recording has been preserved in this repository as Assault-Recording-By-TALLEY.MOV. The existence of that recording is significant: both assailants believed they were in the right, believed the cameras would corroborate them, and believed I would not pursue the matter. All three beliefs were wrong.

What the record shows A maintenance worker named Hakim asked me, hours after the assault and before I reached the emergency room, "so it was just one punch?" The question seemed strange at the time. At the first preliminary hearing, the defense adopted the same one-punch theory and moved to suppress the audio of Hakim's question — the framing had originated with someone inside the building.

I got the surveillance footage before I went to the hospital. With a fractured orbital bone and broken jaw, I retrieved the footage myself. That footage produced the arrest warrant in Commonwealth v. Talley.

The Front Desk

When Philadelphia police responded to the assault on August 22, 2025, building staff at the Goldtex front desk told responding officers that there was a blind spot in the cameras — a representation used at the scene to discourage investigation and suggest that surveillance footage of the incident did not or could not exist.

The building front desk then confronted me directly after the incident. That encounter was recorded. A transcript of that confrontation is being added to this record as it becomes available.

The Camera Contradiction

Three days after the building told police there was a camera blind spot, one of the assailants texted me to say the cameras would prove what happened. These positions cannot both be true.

Building front desk — Aug 22, 2025 "Blind spot in cameras" — represented to responding police officers at the scene, discouraging investigation.
PJ DiDonato (assailant) — Aug 25, 2025 "haha you're funny Justin, if you want to get the courts involved the cameras will show what happened"

PJ — who was present during the eleven-minute attack and sustained no injury — sent that text three days after the assault while I was still recovering. He was not concerned about cameras. He invited court review. He believed the footage would support him.

It did not. The footage produced the arrest warrant.

The Texts

Both assailants contacted me after the assault. The pattern of those contacts — timing, language, and sequence — reflects a coordinated effort to discourage me from pursuing the matter legally.

Stephen Talley → Justin Horn — Aug 22, 2025, 10:53 PM
"I pray for you Justin and I hope you get the help you need. God will forgive you as I forgive you. I don't blame you for trying to ruin my life or get me fired but you crossed the line when you put your hands on me and pj. I won't pursue you in any malicious way and I hope we can find a civil compromise either in court or otherwise. Please refrain from dragging this matter out or I'll be forced to press charges for cyber stalking and defamation. You have already admitted to tracking traffic via RFID exploits and having direct access to peoples home networks via the closet outside your door so this wouldn't be a hard matter to settle. Please leave me and my boyfriend alone. Have a nice life."
Source: Screenshot, preserved verbatim by Bercovitch Law Offices, P.C. as "Text from DFT to PLTF after ASSAULT." Sent the same night I was treated at the emergency room. · Full transcript and analysis

Talley sent this text hours after the assault, the same night I was treated at the emergency room. He inverted the facts entirely — claiming I had "put your hands on me and pj" when I had sustained three fractures. He also referenced my technical background ("RFID exploits," "direct access to peoples home networks") as implicit leverage: these are characteristics of a witness intimidation communication under 18 Pa.C.S. §§4952–4953.

PJ DiDonato → Justin Horn — Aug 25, 2025 (approx.)
"haha you're funny Justin, if you want to get the courts involved the cameras will show what happened"
Source: Paraphrased from victim recollection; referenced in Justin Horn's Aug 26, 2025 email to Lana Brown (Post Brothers management): "The guys that hit me think it's 'funny', as they texted me last night. (Attached). I didn't respond." · Full transcript and analysis

I did not respond to either text.

Witness Intimidation

On August 29, 2025 — seven days after the assault and four days after the camera text — PJ DiDonato stalked me outside the building and screamed from across the street: "you're making a big mistake." I filed a police report for witness intimidation. Incident number: 25-09-101088.

The sequence is documented:

  • Aug 22, 10:53 PM Talley texts Justin — inverts the facts, invokes legal threats, cites technical leverage
  • Aug 23 Sgt. John Callahan, Philadelphia Police Counterterrorism Operations, emails Justin about the antisemitic elements of the assault
  • Aug 25 PJ texts Justin — "haha you're funny" — invites court review, expresses confidence in cameras
  • Aug 26 Justin emails Lana Brown (Post Brothers) reporting the texts and attaching the screenshot
  • Aug 29 PJ stalks Justin outside the building, screams "you're making a big mistake" — police report filed, incident #25-09-101088

The Charges and the Case

The case is Commonwealth v. Talley, CP-51-CR-0000673-2026. Stephen Talley is the named defendant. PJ DiDonato is the second assailant of record.

The charges that survived to trial — aggravated assault (F1, 18 Pa.C.S. §2702(a)(1)), reckless endangerment of another person (REAP), and simple assault — cleared two preliminary hearings. The path was not direct:

  • First preliminary hearing: only simple assault and REAP held over. Aggravated assault was not.
  • Case refiled after supervisory review.
  • Second preliminary hearing: aggravated assault held over. The refiling is institutional acknowledgment that the original handling was deficient.
  • Ethnic intimidation was filed and refiled but was not held over at either preliminary hearing.
  • Trial date: July 21, 2026.

A sneaker print on my arm — documented in the medical record — is why aggravated assault was ultimately held over. That detail, combined with the surveillance footage I retrieved myself, established the physical reality of what happened in a way the defense could not walk back.

ADA Mulville — bodycam footage "I checked our systems. I do not see it." Four ADAs were assigned to this case. Not one compelled production of the responding officer's bodycam footage from the night of August 22, 2025. The bodycam would have recorded what was said at the scene — including what the front desk told responding officers about the cameras.

What Followed

The assault did not end on August 22. What followed it — and what the building management's response to it revealed — is documented across this site. The broad outline:

  • Building management (Post Brothers, pre-Greystar takeover) made false statements to police. The front desk's "blind spot" representation is one of them.
  • Justin was later labeled a "defiant trespasser" in the building where he was assaulted — by the property management company that took over in mid-September 2025.
  • A Hanukkah display was installed in the assault lobby in December 2025 — gold menorah, Star of David, stuffed bears in yarmulkes — by the same management privately refusing Justin's unit transfer request. The display kept him there through the winter.
  • A Post Brothers Greystar-installed portable AC unit began off-gassing volatile organic compounds from improperly heated FSK tape adhesive. Justin was hospitalized by ambulance on May 6, 2026.
  • A non-renewal notice was issued April 15, 2026 — one day after Justin visited the leasing office to ask about his transfer request and management called the police. Officers cleared the scene: no crime.
  • The trial window overlapped with the eviction window. Justin was the primary witness with key prosecution evidence, being pushed out of the building where he needed to remain available as a witness.

The Matthew Pestronk connection — the Post Brothers co-founder who co-chairs the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation and built the building where a documented Skalat Holocaust survivor's grandson was assaulted — is the subject of The Co-Chair. The full institutional picture is documented in the Master Record.

The front desk told police there was a blind spot in the cameras. Three days later, one of the people who attacked me texted to say the cameras would prove his account. The footage I retrieved — with three fractures — produced an arrest warrant. These three facts, taken together, are not ambiguous.

Evidence Referenced on This Page

↑ ↓